His Family (12 page)

"But you can forbid it, can't you?"

"No. Can you?"

"I can try," snapped Roger.

"Let's try what's possible," said Baird. "Let's try to keep her in bed three days."

"Sounds modest," Roger grunted. And a glimmer of amusement came into Baird's impassive eyes.

"Try it," he drawled. "By to-morrow night she'll ask for her stenographer. She'll make you think she is out of the woods. But she won't be, please remember that. A few years more," he added, "and she'll have used up her vitality. She'll be an old woman at thirty-five."

"It's got to be stopped!" cried Roger.

"But how?" came the low sharp retort. "You've got to know her trouble first. And her trouble is deep, it's motherhood--on a scale which has never been tried before--for thousands of children, all of whom are living in a kind of hell. I know your daughter pretty well. Don't make the mistake of mixing her up with the old-fashioned teacher. It isn't what those children learn, it's how they live that interests her, and how they are all growing up. I say she's a mother--in spirit--but her body has never borne a child. And that makes it worse--because it makes her more intense. It isn't natural, you see."

A little later he rose to go.

"By the way," he said, at the door, "there's something I meant to tell her upstairs--about a poor devil she has on her mind. A chap named Berry--dying--lungs. She asked me to go and see him."

"Yes?"

"I found it was only a matter of days." The tragic pity in Baird's quiet voice was so deep as barely to be heard.

"So I shot him full of morphine. He won't wake up. Please tell her that."

Tall, ungainly, motionless, he loomed there in the doorway. With a little shrug and a smile he turned and went slowly out of the house.

CHAPTER XIII

Deborah's recovery was rapid and determined. The next night she was sitting up and making light of her illness. On the third day she dismissed her nurse, and when her father came home from his office he found gathered about her bed not only her stenographer but both her assistant principals. He frowned severely and went to his room, and a few minutes later he heard them leave. Presently she called to him, and he came to her bedside. She was lying back on the pillow with rather a guilty expression.

"Up to your old antics, eh?" he remarked.

"Exactly. It couldn't be helped, you see. It's the last week of our school year, and there are so many little things that have to be attended to. It's simply now or never."

"Humph!" was Roger's comment. "It's now or never with you," he thought. He went down to his dinner, and when he came back he found her exhausted. In the dim soft light of her room her face looked flushed and feverish, and vaguely he felt she was in a mood where she might listen to reason. He felt her hot dry hand on his. Her eyes were closed, she was smiling.

"Tell me the news from the mountains," she said. And he gave her the gossip of the farm in a letter he had had from George. It told of a picnic supper, the first one of the season. They had had it in the usual place, down by the dam on the river, "with a bonfire--a perfect peach--down by the big yellow rock--the one you call the Elephant." As Roger read the letter he could feel his daughter listening, vividly picturing to herself the great dark boulders by the creek, the shadowy firs, the stars above and the cool fresh tang of the mountain night.

"After this little sickness of yours--and that harum scarum wedding," he said, "I feel we're both entitled to a good long rest in mountain air."

"We'll have it, too," she murmured.

"With Edith's little youngsters. They're all the medicine you need." He paused for a moment, hesitating. But it was now or never. "The only trouble with you," he said, "is that you've let yourself be caught by the same disease which has its grip upon this whole infernal town. You're like everyone else, you're tackling about forty times what you can do. You're actually trying not only to teach but to bring 'em all up as your own, three thousand tenement children. And this is where it gets you."

Again he halted, frowning. What next?

"Go on, dear, please," said Deborah, in demure and even tones. "This is very interesting."

"Now then," he continued, "in this matter of your school. I wouldn't ask you to give it up, I've already seen too much of it. But so long as you've got it nicely started, why not give somebody else a chance? One of those assistants of yours, for example--capable young women, both. You could stand right behind 'em with help and advice--"

"Not yet," was Deborah's soft reply. She had turned her head on her pillow and was looking at him affectionately. "Why not?" he demanded.

"Because it's not nicely started at all. There's nothing brilliant about me, dear--I'm a plodder, feeling my way along. And what I have done in the last ten years is just coming to a stage at last where I can really see a chance to make it count for something. When I feel I've done that, say in five years more--"

"Those five years," said her father, "may cost you a very heavy price." As Deborah faced his troubled regard, her own grew quickly serious.

"I'd be willing to pay the price," she replied.

"But why?" he asked with impatience. "Why pay when you don't have to? Why not by taking one year off get strength for twenty years' work later on? You'd be a different woman!"

"Yes, I think I should be. I'd never be the same again. You don't quite understand, you see. This work of mine with children--well, it's like Edith's having a baby. You have to do it while you're young."

"That works both ways," her father growled.

"What do you mean?" He hesitated:

"Don't you want any children of your own?"

Again she turned her eyes toward his, then closed them and lay perfectly still. "Now I've done it," he thought anxiously. She reached over and took his hand.

"Let's talk of our summer's vacation," she said.

A little while later she fell asleep.

Downstairs he soon grew restless and after a time he went out for a walk. But he felt tired and oppressed, and as he had often done of late he entered a little "movie" nearby, where gradually the pictures, continually flashing out of the dark, drove the worries from his mind. For a half an hour they held his gaze. Then he fell into a doze. He was roused by a roar of laughter, and straightening up in his seat with a jerk he looked angrily around. Something broadly comic had been flashed upon the screen; and men and women and children, Italians, Jews and Irish, jammed in close about him, a dirty and perspiring mass, had burst into a terrific guffaw. Now they were suddenly tense again and watching the screen in absorbed suspense, while the crude passions within themselves were played upon in the glamorous dark. And Roger scanned their faces--one moment smiling, all together, as though some god had pulled a string; then mawkish, sentimental, soft; then suddenly scowling, twitching, with long rows of animal eyes. But eager--eager all the time! Hungry people--yes, indeed! Hungry for all the good things in the town, and for as many bad things, too! On one who tried to feed this mob there was no end to their demands! What was one woman's life to them? Deborah's big family!

* * * * *

Edith came to the house one afternoon, and she was in Deborah's room when her father returned from his office. Her convalescence over at last, she was leaving for the mountains.

"Do learn your lesson, Deborah dear," she urged upon her sister. "Let Sarah pack your trunk at once and come up with me on Saturday night."

"I can't get off for two weeks yet."

"Why can't you?" Edith demanded. And when Deborah spoke of fresh air camps and baby farms and other work, Edith's impatience only grew. "You'll have to leave it to somebody else! You're simply in no condition!" she cried.

"Impossible," said Deborah. Edith gave a quick sigh of exasperation.

"Isn't it enough," she asked, "to have worked your nerves to a frazzle already? Why can't you be sensible? You've got to think of yourself a little!"

"You'd like me to marry, wouldn't you, dear?" her sister put in wearily.

"Yes, I should, while there is still time! Just now you look far from it! It's exactly as Allan was saying! If you keep on as you're going you'll be an old woman at thirty-five!"

"Thank you!" said Deborah sharply. Two spots of color leaped in her checks. "You'd better leave me, Edith! I'll come up to the mountains as soon as I can! And I'll try not to look any more like a hag than I have to! Good-night!"

Roger followed Edith out of the room.

"That last shot of mine struck home," she declared to him in triumph.

"I wouldn't have done it," her father said. "I gave you that remark of Baird's in strict confidence, Edith--"

"Now father," was her good-humored retort, "suppose you leave this matter to me. I know just what I'm doing."

"Well," he reflected uneasily, after she had left him, "here's more trouble in the family. If Edith isn't careful she'll make a fine mess of this whole affair."

After dinner he went up to Deborah's room, but through the open doorway he caught a glimpse of his daughter which made him instinctively draw back. Sitting bolt upright in her bed, sternly she was eyeing herself in a small mirror in her hand. Her father chuckled noiselessly. A moment later, when he went in, the glass had disappeared from view. Soon afterwards Baird himself arrived, and as they heard him coming upstairs Roger saw his daughter frown, but she continued talking.

"Hello, Allan," she said with indifference. "I'm feeling much better this evening."

"Are you? Good," he answered, and he started to pull up an easy chair. "I was hoping I could stay awhile--I've been having one of those long mean days--"

"I'd a little rather you wouldn't," Deborah put in softly. Allan turned to her in surprise. "I didn't sleep last night," she murmured, "and I feel so drowsy." There was a little silence. "And I really don't think there's any need of your dropping in to-morrow," she added. "I'm so much better--honestly."

Baird looked at her a moment.

"Right--O," he answered slowly. "I'll call up to-morrow night."

Roger followed him downstairs.

"Come into my den and smoke a cigar!" he proposed in hearty ringing tones. Allan thanked him and came in, but the puzzled expression was still on his face, and through the first moments of their talk he was very absent-minded. Roger's feeling of guilt increased, and he cursed himself for a meddlesome fool.

"Look here, Baird," he blurted out, "there's something I think you ought to know." Allan slightly turned his head, and Roger reddened a little. "The worst thing about living in a house chock full of meddling women is that you get to be one yourself," he growled. "And the fact is--" he cleared his throat--"I've put my foot in it, Baird," he said. "I was fool enough the other day to quote you to Edith."

"To what effect?"

"That if Deborah keeps on like this she'll be an old woman at thirty-five."

Allan sat up in his chair:

"Was Edith here this afternoon?"

"She was," said Roger.

"Say no more."

Baird had a wide, likable, generous mouth which wrinkled easily into a smile. He leaned back now and enjoyed himself. He puffed a little cloud of smoke, looked over at Roger and chuckled aloud. And Roger chuckled with relief. "What a decent chap he is," he thought.

"I'm sorry, of course," he said to Baird. "I thought of trying to explain--"

"Don't," said Allan. "Leave it alone. It won't do Deborah any harm--may even do her a little good. After all, I'm her physician--"

"Are you?" Roger asked with a twinkle. "I thought upstairs you were dismissed."

"Oh no, I'm not," was the calm reply. And the two men went on smoking. Roger's liking for Baird was growing fast. They had had several little talks during Deborah's illness, and Roger was learning more of the man. Raised on a big cattle ranch that his father had owned in New Mexico, riding broncos on the plains had given him his abounding health of body, nerve and spirit, his steadiness and sanity in all this feverish city life.

"Are you riding these days?" he inquired.

"No," said Roger, "the park is too hot--and they don't sprinkle the path as they should. I've had my cob sent up to the mountains. By the way," he added cordially, "you must come up there and ride with me."

"Thanks, I'd like to," Allan said, and with a little inner smile he added dryly to himself, "He's getting ready to meddle again." But whatever amusement Baird had in this thought was concealed behind his sober gray eyes. Soon after that he took his leave.

"Now then," Roger reflected, with a little glow of expectancy, "if Edith will only leave me alone, she may find I'm smarter then she thinks!"

* * * * *

One evening in the following week, after Edith had left town, Roger had Bruce to dine at his club, a pleasant old building on Madison Square, where comfortably all by themselves they could discuss Baird's chances.

"A. Baird and I have been chums," said Bruce, "ever since we were in college. Take it from me I know his brand. And he isn't the kind to be pushed."

"Who wants to push him?" Roger demanded, with a sudden guilty twinge.

"Edith does," Bruce answered. "And I tell you that won't do with A. Baird. He has his mind set on Deborah sure. He's been setting it harder and harder for months--and he knows it--and so does she. But they're both the kind of people who don't like interference, they've got to get to it by themselves. Edith must keep out of the way. She mustn't take it on herself to ask him up to the mountains." Roger gave a little start. "If she does, there'll be trouble with Deborah."

Roger smoked for a moment in silence and then sagely nodded his head.

"That's so," he murmured thoughtfully. "Yes, my boy, I guess you're right."

Bruce lifted his mint julep:

"God, but it's hot in here to-night. How about taking a spin up the river?"

"Delighted," replied his father-in-law.

And a half hour later in Bruce's new car, which was the pride and joy of his life, they were far up the river. On a long level stretch of road Bruce "let her out to show what she could do." And Roger with his heart in his mouth and his eye upon the speedometer, saw it creep to sixty-three.